Star Wars: Episode VIII delayed to December 2017
There’s no way to soften the blow: the wait for Star Wars: Episode VIIIjust got seven months longer. We always knew that the next movie we’d get in universe was this December’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, but the next installment in the saga proper was going to break the December release date strategy and return Star Wars to its usual May release window. That’s not happening anymore, Disney has pushed the release of Episode VIII to December 15th, 2017 and that caused a handful of other movies to rearrange the 2017 release calendar.
The other six Star Wars movies all saw American theatrical release in the month of May: Star Wars was released May 25, 1977, The Empire Strikes Back was released on May 17th, 1980. Return of the Jedi was May 25, 1883, The Phantom Menace was May 19, 1999, Attack of the Clones was May 16, 2002, and Revenge of the Sith was May 19, 2005. Star Wars movies usually kicked off the summer movie season in the years that they came out, now it looks like the rest of the series might park itself in December so as not to compete with other blockbusters in the supercharged summer where future years will see Marvel and DC comic book movies duke it out over box office earnings.
The Force Awakens was the first Star Wars December release and seems to be benefiting from a lack of serious competition in the blockbuster categories. In America, Star Wars is still counter programming for other January mainstays like awards fodder films and attempts at cheap horror movies. It’s made over $1.8 billion dollars worldwide so far and is still beating everything but The Revenant in weekly ticket sales. The Force Awakens is on pace to eek past Titanic to become the second highest grossing movie ever, only behind James Cameron’s Avatar, whose sequel is currently set for anEpisode VIII showdown.
Right now, 20th Century Fox has James Cameron’s Avatar 2 release date set for Christmas 2017, a mere ten days after Rian Johnson’s Star Wars movie is set to drop. It’s very possible that Fox moves Avatar 2earlier or later to clear the way for Star Wars who, by 2017, will be entering their third consecutive December with a Star Wars movie.
Some are speculating that Star Wars also wants to become a December tradition to capitalize on the holiday toy market or a “Chirstmas Craze,” but the real reason seems to be giving Rian Johnson more time to finish a rumored Episode VIII rewrite and to place the movie in a better window with less big spectacle competition in theaters. The rush on toys is actually in late November and early December in addition to when the movie is in theaters, so people with the Star Wars license are going to be in the same position they were for The Force Awakens, trying to sell characters we don’t know anything about or withholding product until the movie is officially released.
When something as massive as Star Wars changes its release date, everyone else shuffles to fill the gaps and/or move out of the big movie’s way. Episode VIII’s shift was no different.
Johnny Depp and Geoffry Rush are back as Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbosa in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which slipped into Star Wars’ old May 26 2017 release date. Paramount noticed that Pirates of the Caribbean had moved up to May, so they took the opportunity to take the untitled Terminator Genisys sequel off the release date of May 19, 2017 and instead will release the Baywatch movie that will star Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron on that date.
Pirates 5 was supposed to come out on July 7, 2017, but now that it is coming out in May, Sony took the chance to push Spider-Man earlier by a couple of weeks to July 7. That left an empty gap on July 28 (Spider-Man’s old date), so Sony took their reboot of Jumanji off of Christmas 2016 and moved it all the way back to July 28, 2017.
Just to be clear, here are the 2017 release dates changed because ofStar Wars in some capacity:
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales: May 26, 2017
- Terminator Genisys 2: Never, 2017
- Baywatch: May 19, 2017
- Spider-Man: July 7, 2017
- Jumanji: July 28, 2017
- Star Wars: Episode VIII: December 15, 2017
Got it? Good.